Georgia Rachel Kirton

I'm not sure if its too soon or too late for this, but she is sleeping and I am awake so... now seems to be when I have if I'm going to do it at all.  You've probably heard this from my own mouth, but I've been planning on recording it this way so this is about how it went.

I've been reading blogs of home birth mothers since I decided I would be one.  The first one I read was beautiful.  The mother is a photographer and an avid blogger with a loyal following.  Her labor was 48 hours long, and she had these incredible photos of her laboring by candlelight in her bathtub (her hubs and midwives took over photography as she was laboring).  Others I read were also photographers and bloggers, and women with unique quirkily styled houses that they had decorated to reflect their hipster color palates and took piles and piles of pictures of their baby rooms decorated with "vintage pieces" so down to the tiniest details as to make other baby rooms just look stupid.  As I was reading them I didn't have this attitude about them.  :)  I was just in awe of the majesty of impending motherhood and believed that there was no way on this earth that my baby room and blog and pictures of it all wouldn't look just as breathtakingly idyllic.  Well... Georgia came early.

I felt giant.  I couldn't sleep.  My back hurt all the time and I was asking around for recommendations of chiropractors because I was sure that if it hurt this bad while I was pregnant, she had to have been in a position that was going to get her stuck, or cause my tail bone to break.  I went to work on Monday and did my sister-in-law Rainee's hair.  I met my midwife through Rainee- she has had all 5 of her kids at home.  She said, "You're going to be so excited, and you'll want to share that, but don't tell anyone for a while.  Just be with your baby and enjoy that time as a family [in the hours after she gets here]."  We had a really nice long visit.  My back was killing me.

The midwives, Melissa and Heidi, have only had 2 first time moms have their babies before their due dates in the last year.  We were sure I'd go over.  All the statistics say I would go over.  They, and all the home birth blogs, said my labor would be long- at least 24 hours, probably longer since I was a first timer.  In our Bradley Birth class they had us cross out the 17 under normal length if labor for a first time mother, and had us write in 24 in our text book.  My mom though?  Never got to her due date with any of her 5 natural (4 at home) births.  But I wasn't going to dare to hope.  I was uncomfortable, sure.  But I was aching for Georgia to come early so my mom could be there to see her and hold her and get to know her before her 3 week trip to Italy.  I wept in prayer asking that if it be His will, that she would come early, and not break my mother's heart.  Still though, I've come to expect the worst so I can be pleasantly surprised when I'm wrong.

We watched a documentary on whales, and went to bed.  I picked up The Happiest Baby on the Block and read for a while.  I placed my book mark, and closed it at 11:30pm, just as a real non-braxton hix contraction started.  I smiled.  I thought, "Yay!  I'm going to have her in the next couple days!"  I tried to go to sleep, but 8 minutes later, another contraction.  I smiled again.  "Fun!  I'm going to have a baby eventually."  I couldn't sleep through them, so I got up to take a bath- sure that this would stop the contractions so I could sleep.  They didn't, but I was timing them and they were erratic, and I hadn't had any of the signs that I was told I HAD TO HAVE before I allowed to believe that I was actually in labor.

I went downstairs to kill time and looked at "who wore it best" on the Oscar Red Carpet, for hours.  I timed the contractions on a website online- still erratic- 8 minutes, 3 minutes, 11 minutes, 3 minutes...  I texted the midwife at about 2 am asking what I could do to stop these pesky contractions, and she said to try a bath again, and just try to really relax.  By this time they were starting to hurt and I couldn't keep from *vocalizing* a bit during each one.  I wasn't screaming or anything but "moaning" sounds gross.  I decided to try to eat, so I tried to make some eggs and toast.  I staggered upstairs to run my second bath and didn't turn any lights on because I didn't want to wake Hyrum because he was going to work in the morning because this wasn't the real deal.  So I was moaning, crying because they were really starting to hurt and I had been doing this for hours alone, and I tripped on the vacuum in the dark, pitching me forward and casting my eggs and toast all over, yolk splashing and dripping like a golden cymbal to highlight my failure in getting these dumb contractions to just go away!

*(the following 2 paragraphs didn't publish originally and have been added subsequently.)
"WHA?!  What's happening?!"  Hyrum hasn't had a full-on night terror in quite a while, but he still wakes up at random sounds believing to his very core that we are all- all of human kind- about to die.  Without a word of explanation I just kept on having my contraction and crying, and he dragged himself out of bed.  I handed him the phone to time contractions with a short and rather impatient explanation of how to do it.  I still didn't believe that I was going have the baby but I couldn't tell him to go back top bed because it hurt enough that I just wanted not to be alone anymore.

Once we got settled into contractions and timing those contractions in the tub, I decided I wanted a bathtub picture like the one above, which I poached from a blog.  I said between contractions, "This is gonna sound super weird, but will you go get the camera and take a picture?"  He got up without a word and fetched the camera, and standing at full height from outside the door, took a picture with the flash.  Very patiently, I think, I whispered, "Turn off the flash, take a knee, and take it again."  He said, "No, it looks good."  I didn't have enough space in my head to reason out an argument so I said "K." and we went on with timing.

*
He said at some point, "these are pretty consistently 3 minutes apart."  Then 3 minutes later, "Yeah these are consistent."  I said, "Tell the midwives."  So he texted Melissa, and when she took the information that we gave her and she decided to come over, it was real to me, I was actually in labor, and going to have this baby. ...in 2 days, probably.

The next few hours were a mixture of shock at what contractions feel like (ugly.  they feel like the ugliest ugly anybody should ever have to feel- nothing less glamorous... I wont elaborate), and and denial of what all of the things that were happening meant.  Now I mentioned our birth class that had not 1 but 3 text books, and was a 24 hour course.  What I know about birth is a LOT and falls short only of experiential knowledge (...the most important kind).  But my knowledge of what the statistics say made me think things like, "I'm feeling the urge to push and I feel as if I can't do this anymore.  That's supposed to mean that I'm nearing transition.  But I've only been doing this for a few hours, and the midwives aren't here yet, so I can't be in transition.  I must just be a wuss."  When the midwives arrived, I was fully dilated, I pushed, and Georgia was born at 6:31 am on February 28.  I was also born at 6:31 am :)

My brother Sean and his wife Ashley lived with us until last week, and I woke Sean up pretty early on with the *vocalizing*.  He was headed to work when I was finishing on up, so he heard me pushing, and by that point I was hollering like a gaggle of banshees were burning me while I was being drawn and quartered by an evil band of sweaty toothed surfs.  As I was screaming my guts out, I thought, "This is very distracting.  Its working exceedingly well.  I hope no one is out for an early jog."  Anyhow, Sean heard my last cries, and Georgia's first ones.  And since he was on his way to my parent's house to pick up my dad for work and they were about to find out anyway, we decided to call and tell them ourselves.

In retrospect, it seems odd that I had Sean come upstairs and see her before I even delivered the placenta, but he was leaving for work so I thought he outta just come on up and see!  We hadn't even cut the cord!  But I covered up and he said hello that was that.  My uncle Steve was there in the same way for my birth, and for my whole life he has taken the opportunity to brag, "I heard your first breath", with this big adorable grin on his face.  Sean will be Georgia's uncle Steve.  I'm stoked about that.  After that, we didn't call anyone for a few hours.

People have asked if I'm glad I "went natural".  As it was happening I was pretty sure I was crazy, I'll be honest.  The contractions were... nothing I could have been prepared for.  But when it came to pushing, I could feel that if I kept pushing *right this second*, that my worst fears would come to pass and I would be fully aware and have full sensation of my own flesh tearing apart.  So I was able to hold back and draw it out a little longer so that my body could work with my angelic midwives and I didn't tear at all.  And I only pushed for about 30 minutes anyway.

You know that part of Sleeping Beauty when the kingdom is full of fire from the King burning all of the spinning wheels, and the fairies whoosh their wands and appear at princess Aurora's bedside and whoosh her away in the night to the safety of the Briar Cottage?  That's what my midwives were like.  I was hollering away in our bed like no one in the world had ears at all, when they appeared and were pressing on my back and telling me how amazing I was and that my body was doing everything right, and to go ahead and holler till the cows come home, "but let's bring it down lower so you have a voice left that you can use to talk to your baby."  I was inside myself and not aware of what was happening but when I was hot there was a cold towel on my head.  When I was weak there was a hand holding me up.  When I was unsure I was able, there were encouraging words getting me past the fear.  I've said all along that women don't need help to have babies- that women do it in grass huts every day- and Hyrum and I could have gotten sweet Georgia here just fine, but have mercy... What a beautiful experience it was to have women there with me who believe in the process and are confident when I don't know how to be.  I don't have the words to do their work justice. 

That's not to say that Hyrum did nothing.  We had practiced all kinds of stuff that would help me relax and encourage me, but when it came down to it, I just wanted him as close to me as possible, holding my hand.  I wanted to experience it all together.  I felt worried that I was hurting him toward the end with the nature of my "hand holding", but he says it was fine.  He tells people he's proud of me and that I did great.  How awful to deny a woman the companionship of her companion in the most difficult physical thing she'll ever experience.  I'm glad things have changed.

As I decided (and was helped) to push past the last hurdle of fear, and pushed Georgia all the way out, Melissa asked if I wanted to catch her.  "Yes!" I cried, and reached down and pulled my beautiful daughter up onto my chest.  I haven't thought about this is several days, but when my hands grasped that squishy slimy wriggly little thing, I was actually surprised to see a baby!  I said, "I don't know what I thought it was gonna be, but I thought, 'Oh my gosh, a baby!'"  I don't remember her being purple or puffy or bloody at all, I was just high as a kite on adrenaline and the fact that it was over, and thought she was gorgeous.  She is decidedly gorgeous, that is true, but its funny to look back at pictures and compare my memory of it to the documentation.

Speaking of pictures, soon after she was born and weighed, Hyrum turned to me laughing heartily and said, "Here's that picture you had me take."  Yep, the one about which he said, "No, it looks good."  Why not take another one?  What else did he have going on at the moment?  It is a ridiculous picture, with lots of bum.  I've photo shopped it to make it look better, but we laughed pretty heartily about that one.  The angle makes it juuust barely too indecent to post.

I had planned to have my photographer-extraordinaire friend Krystal there to document so I could have beautiful romantic pictures just like my hipster counterparts, but was so convinced that I wasn't having a baby that I got stuck inside my own head before I realized it was time to call her.  I am a bit sad about that.  But the pictures we have are very honest about how it went.  And she came over and we took amazing naked new baby pictures.  And I love them, and her.  :)

That was a LOT longer than I planned for it to be.  Quite the opposite of Georgia's birth.

Georgia Rachel Kirton
February 28, 2012
7lbs 9 oz
21 inches long
7 hours from first contraction to birth
30 min of pushing
No tearing.
Boo yah.